The compilation El so de la democracia is the result of a four days workshop on « the politics of sound » which I conducted at l’ull cec, Barcelona, in November 2010. The project started with a collective sound documentation of the regional elections that take place once every four years in Catalunia.

Our group visited polling stations in several neighbourhoods in the city, recording the election process, atmospheres, voices of citizens and party members, as well as sounds from the surroundings.

These recordings have then served as a basis for group discussions about contemporary and historical democratic practices, as well as about political aspects of sound production and reception. Finally, each participant has produced an individual track mirroring these reflections, using sometimes additional audio material from media or historical sources.

Following Rancière’s idea of « politics as a form of experience which revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time », our attention went especially to those voices which remain unheard in the democratic process of voting. By approaching polling stations as sound environments and considering them in relation with the social structure of their surroundings, the absence in the process of those whose part in the civic society is that they « have no part » became more evident: migrants, homeless people, teenagers, absentionists and other outsiders.

Writing these lines, I’m witnessing on TV changes happening right now in Libya, Spain… – a revolution – which represent another powerful example of « sound of democracy ». Such democratic eruptions reminds us that democracy is always rooted in the violent desire to interrupt and reconfigure power relations, a desire which still haunts the relative silence and peace of our polling stations. It is up to us to decide if we want to hear its echo or not.